This morning I delivered a keynote presentation at the Schools ICT Conference in Cape Town. The conference is attended by 500 people, mostly teachers, and is about the use of ICT in education.
My presentation The cellphone: ultimate distraction or powerful learning tool? is about the growing disconnect between childrens’ learning experiences in classrooms and outside “in the world.” I propose the cellphone as a tool that supports formal education and also informal learning, and thus as a way to span these disconnected sites of learning. (Children have multiple sites of learning, e.g. school, home, playground, etc.)
Two projects that I highlighted: Dr Math and M4Girls. Two suggested projects: an alternate reality game using cellphones and m-novels, short stories serialised into daily chapters, delivered on cellphones. The phone is used as a reading and authoring platform.
Steven Vosloo 
And what a great speech it was! Thanks, Steve. It really helped to set the right tone for the conference, and helped push me along the next step in terms of my own use of IT in classrooms.
When Martin Luther wrote his 95 Theses concerning the Roman Catholic Church and nailed them to the door of Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany, on October 31, 1517, technology played a tremendous role in the subsequent dissemination of his ideas and the development of the Protestant Reformation in Europe. Johann Gutenberg had invented the printing press in the 1450s, and because of the technological ability of his invention to duplicate and circulate new ideas, far-reaching religious, cultural, and economic changes ensued after Luther wrote and “published” his thoughts.
Several noted educational technology users and bloggers have observed that in the early twenty-first century, we are experiencing a qualitatively different era of content publication unprecedented in recorded history. It is likely that neither Gutenberg nor Luther could have imagined the age of global publishing which has dawned for the common human being today. To describe this new age of Communication includes the Cellphone!
Steve, it was awesome meeting you and hearing your side of the “story”. Thank you for “hearing” me out re Mixt and your input on this sensitive topic.
Thank you!!!
Durban Greetings
Ceanlia